Hardest of Hearts
by thegirlwiththeradishearrings
Summary: Everyone Arya Stark has encountered tried to break her, rip out her claws, make her civil, but it is not within her nature to yield nor be broken, and Tywin would not dare go against her nature.
1. Hardest of Hearts

_Wild_, is Tywin's first thought upon seeing the starved body of Arya Stark forcibly dragged into the throne room. _Savage_, he thinks as the rock she covertly clutches in her palm ravages the face of the guard twisting her arm. _Clever_ is she: her boy's breeches and tunic disguising the women's features slowly peeking through the hollows of her cheeks and soft curve of her chest, _clever clever_. _Sharp_ are her teeth as they sink into the fingers of her captors. _Fierce_ are the color of her eyes, defiantly gazing up at Cersei and her court with their cold, grey intensity. _Red_ is the color of her smile, blood seeping from her blistered lips. _Mocking_ is the bow she gives reluctantly, and she does so only after spitting at the floor and being yanked by her hair. _Familiarity_ clings to the air surrounding her and fascination stains the composure he relies so heavily on. _Predatory _are her movements when she eyes the cruel boy king atop his throne, as if she is preparing for her kill, imagining the execution with deft precision.

Later, he beckons her to the Tower of the Hand. If she is surprised by his summons the expression is internalized, locked behind closed doors. She stands in a grey cotton gown three sizes too small on her meandering frame. He is told she had refused to wear anything but the clothes that remained in the dusty chest brought with her father's party South all those years ago. She makes no move to sit and the Hand does not expect anything but this unwilling aherence from the girl.

"You're quite clever," he states blatantly.

"If I wasn't, I'd have been dead a long time ago." She doesn't bother with formality and they both know why he has called on her.

Standing, Tywin pins his knuckles to table and begins to scruntinize the child. The nose is the same, yes, although the shoulders are carved longer this time and the neck is longer, less of a girl's face. His hand reaches out and his fingers edge below the jut of her jaw and guide her face upward to meet his eyes. He wants to be precise in his deductions.

"My lord of Lannister," she derides, the sneer marring her already striking face. "I hoped you had not forgotten, I have grown, you see. Sansa had barely recognized me, I thought you might have disremembered as well." He knows what she speaks of. Whispers of Harrenhal sound inside his head and the image of his scraggly cupbearer manifest.

_Unsettling_ is the sensation in his abdomen. "Nan, was it?"

"Nan is gone. I am Arya now."

"It was rumored death had taken all the Starks."

"Aye, some. Robb and my father can attest to that." Her lips twist in disgust and with a jerk of her head she frees herself from his grasp. Such an act of open defiance might have been punished if the girl had been someone lesser, but Tywin thinks her a particular study so he simply watches her with a frigid gaze. "But not all of us, _my lord_."

Lord Tywin has always been good at taming wild creatures-his impertinent children, the lions held in the bowels of Casterly Rock, unruly horses-but he will not try to master her. Learn her perhaps, but some beasts will always remain as such, wild and feral and unrestrained. Just as well, Tywin thinks. Everyone Arya Stark has encountered tried to break her, rip out her claws, make her civil, but it is not within her nature to yield nor be broken, and Tywin would not dare go against her nature.

**A/N: yeah yeah yeah, it's a weird ship but I'm a weird gal**


	2. Killer of Kings

Tywin stares at the candle's flame with rapture, trying and failing to not focus on the girl before him. It isn't the flame that interests him, but rather what its light touches. She stands in a simple cloak of skin and little else, staring at him with a glare made of her commandeering brow, a mouth that speaks pretty lies and bitter truths, and eyes that dance along a precipice of madness.

How often has Tywin found himself searching for those vicious eyes amongst the councils and halls? How many evenings has the Hand felt the consequence of her presence in his tower and been defenseless to send her away? How familiar has the girl become that he has begun to crave the sound of her footsteps ascending the stair? How many more nights until he stops regarding the shape of the shadow she births against the walls of his solar?

He gathers parchment riddled with ink and makes a point of not meeting her gaze.

She steps closer into the light, shedding the silhouette of shadows that linger along the contours of her body. Tywin cannot resist and his eyes shift to the figure in front of him. With the altering perspective, the flame shivers and dresses the girl in a new treasury of shades. The harsh plains of her face are struck with the dark lines and the candle's glow is mirrored in the pools of her eyes, setting them ablaze with licks of light.

He has deprived himself the pleasure of perception for much too long, and the discretion he maintains with the girl has grown wearisome. And the sight of her composure stripped-leaving her to the savage bones beneath-was enough for Tywin to abandon any hold he possessed of his formality.

The Hand's stare envelopes the girl, lays waste to her bare form.

Layers of cloth bind her chest, the breasts underneath struggling to succumb to their containment. Filthy and frayed, yet the material holds strong and true, although the girl may not be capable of the strategy for long, it will soon become fruitless. She's outgrown her past. Gone is the child that disguised herself as a boy and traveled with thieves and rapers alike. That part of her is dead, leaving a woman in her stead.

Sweat clings to her brow and shimmers in the light, matting locks of dark hair to her forehead.

The girl had discarded the rest of her attire, burned them most likely. Her smallclothes are all that remain. That, and her knives.

One is strapped to the inside of her thigh in an elaborately crafted weirwood sheath, the second hidden on the opposite calf, smaller and easier to conceal is the third along her pale forearm.

A sense of pride swells inside Tywin's belly. He gifted her those daggers on her nameday. He'd mulled over the decision for days. Give the killing thing the tools to do her killing? Put the power in the Stark girl's deft hands, what would come of it? But Tywin supposed his choice was selfish, in the end. She would have been satisfied with a manuscript on the warrior queen of Dorne, Nymeria, but Tywin had wanted to see the beast veiled beneath the girl's facade. He liked her best that way. Eyes cruel and words that tasted of blood when she spoke. It gave him a distorted sense of satisfaction to ease out her claws, see the girl slip her mask. She was a creature of honorable intentions, Tywin knew that. She was akin to her father that way. But as the Targaryens thrived on their teetering scale of sanity, so did the girl. Perhaps it was her hardships that had carved her into such a wild creature… maybe it was her blood, or the blood her knives had savored.

He balances the pressure of his position on the broad curvature of his shoulders and straightens them as he speaks. "What is it, girl?"

"_It is done._" Her lips feast on the words and the feral snarl is becoming of the the wolf child. The laugh seethes its way up her throat and catches on her tongue, cold and depraved of remorse.

Tywin arches a brow and leans an elbow on the arm of his chair. When he doesn't reply, Arya eases the dagger from her thigh, and ambles a step towards the table. The light seizes the blade momentarily, snatching a glimpse of red along the edge of the knife, and flashes of naked skin. Tywin sees the blood only after Arya has driven the point into the flesh of the wood. "All hail King Joffrey," she whispers, closing the chasm of space between them. The girl wears the stench of blood like perfume.

Unable to halt the tilt of his lips, he stares down the Stark girl. Her eyes glitter in satisfaction, still muddled with bloodlust. When her lips find his, Tywin does not object. "Long live the king," he murmurs against her mouth.


End file.
